Becoming Experts

Hello family and friends!

What a great week we've had in the Tzemach class! We've added a few new activities to our routine, as well as started our first exploration! We're only in the beginning stages of our exploration but you'll see it expand and develop throughout the next few weeks.

To start our week, we asked the kids to tell us some things that they find interesting. We wanted to know what they liked and what they were curious about. As I explained in my last post, this gives us an idea of what types of explorations the kids will enjoy this year. It also helps us have an idea of what types of books we should add to the reading center, what themed objects we should add to home living, what types of loose parts we could provide them to build with, etc. When we know the interests of each child, we can gauge our learning around it and make it more meaningful. We have our list hanging up in the classroom so we can refer to it throughout the year. As the year progresses, the kids may want to add ideas to their list. They may also change their interest and want to take an idea off of the list. We allow the list to change with the kids throughout the year. Here is a list of what everyone said...

Oscar - bucket trucks
Sylvia - otters
Yishai - horses
Sophia - kitties
Emma - frogs
Ellie - birds
Audrey - cheetahs, magnolias
Callie - pigs
Paxton - space ships
Adam - bird nests
Yael - big doll houses
Harley - princesses
Grady - dinosaurs

To pick our first exploration, we had the kids vote. We want them to learn about things that they are actually interested in. As we vote, we talk briefly about each topic. We discuss the concept of tally marks and numbers, as well as adding. We picked some options from our list of interests but also added the idea of orchards and honey. For those of you that don't know, we are about to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. The kids have been learning a lot about this during Torah Time and have been asking questions in the classroom. Part of this holiday includes dipping apples in honey. Since several of them seemed interested, we decided to add these ideas to our list. I honestly thought they would vote on something else, but the overwhelming majority said they wanted to learn about apple orchards and honey. I'm thrilled that they picked this exploration because it will go hand in hand with the holiday coming up. We are also getting a bee hive in our school so we'll be able to have some serious hands on exploration! After we voted, we noticed that some of the kids were going around with their own list of topics and asking their peers what they wanted to learn about. We were so happy to see them expanding some of our morning meeting time during play. We'll definitely find a way to let the kids take control of the voting for our next exploration!

After the kids voted, we made a KWL chart. This is something that I do with the kids at the beginning of every exploration. To start our chart, we make a list of everything that we already know about the topic (K for know). Next, we make a list of all the questions we have about that topic (W for want to know). After the exploration is over, we will conclude by making a list of everything that we've learned (L for learn). This chart gives us a great idea of where to start with the kids. It gives us an idea of what they already know and what they are curious about. We base our exploration off of these curiosity questions and make sure we answer each one. It's always fun to pull the chart back out at the end of the exploration and see how much we've learned! Next week, we will be doing some research and experiments to start answering some of our questions. Here is a list of our K and W. As you can see, we have a lot of questions!

Know:
- There are lots of apples.
- You can dip apples in honey.
- Bees make honey.
- You pick apples at an orchard.
- Some apples grow high in the trees.

Want to know:
- Why do bees make honey?
- What different kids of apples are in the world?
- Can you make your own honey?
- What is a beehive?
- How do bees make honey?
- What is an orchard?
- How is an orchard made?
- What is the red stuff on an apple?
- How do apples get their color?
- How do apples grow?
- How do bees get honey?
- How do bees make honey?
- How do bees make hives?
- How does honey get in the hive?
- Why do apples change colors?

We also started both reading and math buddies this week! Every Monday we will meet with Ms. Kim's 4th graders. They come into our classroom and read books to us. This week our kids picked out their favorite book and got to have their new buddy read to them. It was a great experience for both sets of classes and we love the idea of joining our elementary kids with our preschoolers! We also started math buddies this week, which will happen every Wednesday. For this time, we get to meet with Rabbi Meir's college students. Each of our kids gets to partner with one of his students and work on math concepts. This week they began with playing games with the kids. Some chose to work in the classroom, some in the Kline, and others even went outside to explore math. Our kids loved it! They've been asking about math and reading buddies every day. We're so thankful that we get the opportunity to expose the kids to both of these partner times.

We also spent some time this week making gifts for our parents for Open House. We hope you enjoyed them! We had a great time speaking with everyone that night and I hope all of your questions were answers. Of course, I'm always here if you have more questions!

I hope everyone enjoys the long weekend!

Love,
Ms. Rachael



Approaches to Learning:

• Demonstrate delight or satisfaction when completing a task, solving a problem, or making a discovery.
• Show ability to focus attention for increasing variety of chosen tasks and activities for short periods of time (10-20 minutes).
• Understand a task can be accomplished through several steps.
• Reason about events, relationships, or problems. 

Social & Emotional:

• Demonstrate confidence by participating in most classroom activities.
• Manage transitions positively when told what to expect.
• Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others during play.
• Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time. 

Language and Literacy:

• Recall some details in stories read aloud.
• Explore books independently.
• Show interest in informational texts about familiar objects.
• Relate information from texts to personal experience.
• Begin to recognize similarities in sounds at the begging and ending of words. 

Mathematics:

• Generate conjectures based on personal experiences and simple reasoning.
• Locate patterns in the environment.
• Count orally forward to twenty and backward from three.
• Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.

It's pretty awesome being 4...

Enjoying books with our wonderful new reading buddies!...

Working hard on some special gifts for our families...

We met our math buddies this week!...